This section is intended to provide information relevant to understanding various technologies described herein. As the section's title implies, this is a discussion of related art that should in no way imply that it is prior art. Generally, related art may or may not be considered prior art. It should therefore be understood that any statement in this section should be read in this light, and not as any admission of prior art.
Limited bandwidth digital video systems may include systems such as Switched Digital Video (SDV) systems and Over-The-Top (OTT) broadcast systems. SDV describes video services in cable networks that are a hybrid between VOD (Video-On-Demand) and traditional one-way broadcast services. OTT describes a system providing video services through digital communication protocols, such as TCP/IP and UDP, and OTT systems may also rely on multicasting of live video streams.
Sometimes, SDV services are not always streamed on any given portion of a video distribution network. Instead, SDV services are typically placed on the video distribution network only if one or more subscribers tunes to that service. These limited bandwidth systems can change the model for bandwidth consumption from a linear model based on the program offering to one based on program viewing statistics. In some cases, an SDV service does not consume any bandwidth until a subscriber tunes to that particular service. Further, SDV allows service providers to offer an extensive lineup of niche content ranging from local and premium sports packages to ethnic programming, thus leveraging a “long tail” phenomenon to improve customer satisfaction, reduce churn, and generate revenue streams from premium tiers. The bandwidth savings are achieved since some channels being offered are not being watched by anyone.
Nevertheless, there is a finite amount of bandwidth available for programs, and with more programs being offered than available bandwidth to carry all offered programs simultaneously, the possibility exists that a user may tune to a channel and there would not be sufficient network resources to allow the viewer to see it. This could lead to a poor user experience, because some programs listed in traditional television programming may not actually be available for viewing. Further, while these examples are described using SDV as the context for which the dynamic ordering is applied, these examples can also be applied to OTT type video distribution systems that use multicast, where the bandwidth can also be limited or finite, and thus bandwidth limitations are also present.